Institutions

The Department for German Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb was founded in 1895. In these 118 years, Viktor Žmegač and his successors, specifically the literary scientist and linguist Stanko Žepić, made a name for themselves in the field of Germanic philology with active participation in current research tendencies in linguistic and literary science of the past decades.

Currently the department counts a little more than half of one thousand students and over 30 staff who are active in teaching and research. In addition, the Zagreb German Studies Department has regularly published the periodical Zagreber Germanistische Beiträge for more than a decade, conducts research within the framework of projects financed by the Croatian Ministry of Education and Research and has close contacts with numerous institutes in- and outside of the country (amongst others with institutes in Zadar, Osijek, Rijeka, Ljubljana, Vienna, Mainz, Cologne and Berlin). In line with the Bologna process in higher education, the German Studies Department was successful in restructuring the study program in such a way as to include new and most modern tendencies in teaching and research. Within this context, in addition to the traditional chairs for German Language and Literature, the chair for German-language Didactics and the chair for German Translation Studies as well as the chair for Dutch Studies were founded.

After completing his German Studies and Sociology degrees at the Zagreb and Münster universities, from 1974 to 1980 Prof. Dr. Mirko Gojmerac worked as research assistant for German at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb. After completing his PhD with a dissertation on Verbal Aspect in Serbo-Croatian and German he became docent in 1982 and in 1993 professor of German language at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb. He also was deputy dean from 1994 to 1998 and subsequently until 2000 he took on the function as dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Since 2008 he is the head of the chair for Translation Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb which had just been founded at that time. From 1997 until 2001 Prof. Dr. Mirko Gojmerac was also the head of the research project of the Croatian Ministry of Education and Research on the topic “expert languages” and coordinator of the TEMPUS project called “Study Program for Translation/Interpreting in Croatia” of the Directorate General of Education and Culture of the European Commission. Since 2007 he supervises the research project of the Croatian Ministry of Education and Research on the topic Intercultural Communication and Translation.

In Zagreb she completed a degree in German and Comparative Literature Studies. Since 2000 she has been working as a research assistant at the Chair for Literary Sciences in the Department of German Studies of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, starting in 2009 as docent. Her master’s thesis was on the review of German-language dramatic art in Croatian theater in Zagreb (2003), and der doctoral thesis on German-language creative nonfiction (2008). She regularly reviews German-language new releases for the 3rd program of the Croatian broadcasting service. She had longer study trips to Vienna and Munich. For years now she is a mentor at the Seminar for Literary Translation.

Her research interests are creative nonfiction and the German-language dramatic art in Croatia the topic on which she published a book in 2011 with the title: Reflexes and Shadows: The Repertoire of the German-language Theater at the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb until 1939.

Monika Blagus studied German and English Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb from which she graduated with distinction. Since 2009 she works in the project entitled Intercultural Communication and Translation and is also a teaching assistant in the Department for German Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. Within the framework of the doctoral program in linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb she is writing her doctoral thesis with the working title Relevant Elements of Knowledge When Translating Expert Texts. An Empirical Study Taking Selected Musical Science Texts as an Example.

In addition to her activities within the framework of the EU-funded project TransStar, she is also part of the EU-funded project called OPTIMALE (Optimising Professional Translator Training in a Multilingual Europe), an Erasmus Academic Network.